Communication subsystem for wireless devices or the like

ABSTRACT

Briefly, in accordance with one embodiment of the invention, a wireless terminal may include an application subsystem and a communication subsystem. The communication subsystem in one embodiment may enable a virtual direct interface to a remote network to be presented to the application subsystem via a wireless communication system air link interface. The communication subsystem may allow applications of the application subsystem to be independent of any particular radio technology or network implementation of a wireless communication system air link interface. Once a session is established between the communication subsystem and the wireless communication system air link interface, the application subsystem may gain access to the remote network through the communication subsystem via a transport interface.

This application is a divisional application of U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 10/330,840 filed Dec. 27, 2002 now U.S. Pat. No. 7,636,371which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING FIGURES

The subject matter regarded as the invention is particularly pointed outand distinctly claimed in the concluding portion of the specification.The invention, however, both as to organization and method of operation,together with objects, features, and advantages thereof, may best beunderstood by reference to the following detailed description when readwith the accompanying drawings in which:

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a wireless communication system inaccordance with one embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a wireless terminal that includes anapplication subsystem and a communication subsystem in accordance withone embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of a communication subsystem in accordancewith one embodiment of the present invention; and

FIG. 4 is a flow diagram of an aspect of operation of a communicationsubsystem in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

It will be appreciated that for simplicity and clarity of illustration,elements illustrated in the figures have not necessarily been drawn toscale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements areexaggerated relative to other elements for clarity. Further, whereconsidered appropriate, reference numerals have been repeated among thefigures to indicate corresponding or analogous elements.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In the following detailed description, numerous specific details are setforth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the invention.However, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that thepresent invention may be practiced without these specific details. Inother instances, well-known methods, procedures, components and circuitshave not been described in detail so as not to obscure the presentinvention.

Some portions of the detailed description that follows are presented interms of algorithms and symbolic representations of operations on databits or binary digital signals within a computer memory. Thesealgorithmic descriptions and representations may be the techniques usedby those skilled in the data processing arts to convey the substance oftheir work to others skilled in the art.

An algorithm is here, and generally, considered to be a self-consistentsequence of acts or operations leading to a desired result. Theseinclude physical manipulations of physical quantities. Usually, thoughnot necessarily, these quantities take the form of electrical ormagnetic signals capable of being stored, transferred, combined,compared, and otherwise manipulated. It has proven convenient at times,principally for reasons of common usage, to refer to these signals asbits, values, elements, symbols, characters, terms, numbers or the like.It should be understood, however, that all of these and similar termsare to be associated with the appropriate physical quantities and aremerely convenient labels applied to these quantities.

Unless specifically stated otherwise, as apparent from the followingdiscussions, it is appreciated that throughout the specificationdiscussions utilizing terms such as “processing,” “computing,”“calculating,” “determining,” or the like, refer to the action and/orprocesses of a computer or computing system, or similar electroniccomputing device, that manipulate and/or transform data represented asphysical, such as electronic, quantities within the computing system'sregisters and/or memories into other data similarly represented asphysical quantities within the computing system's memories, registers orother such information storage, transmission or display devices.

Embodiments of the present invention may include apparatuses forperforming the operations herein. This apparatus may be speciallyconstructed for the desired purposes, or it may comprise a generalpurpose computing device selectively activated or reconfigured by aprogram stored in the device. Such a program may be stored on a storagemedium, such as, but is not limited to, any type of disk includingfloppy disks, optical disks, CD-ROMs, magnetic-optical disks, read-onlymemories (ROMs), random access memories (RAMS), electricallyprogrammable read-only memories (EPROMs), electrically erasable andprogrammable read only memories (EEPROMs), magnetic or optical cards, orany other type of media suitable for storing electronic instructions,and capable of being coupled to a system bus for a computing device.

The processes and displays presented herein are not inherently relatedto any particular computing device or other apparatus. Various generalpurpose systems may be used with programs in accordance with theteachings herein, or it may prove convenient to construct a morespecialized apparatus to perform the desired method. The desiredstructure for a variety of these systems will appear from thedescription below. In addition, embodiments of the present invention arenot described with reference to any particular programming language. Itwill be appreciated that a variety of programming languages may be usedto implement the teachings of the invention as described herein.

In the following description and claims, the terms “coupled” and“connected,” along with their derivatives, may be used. It should beunderstood that these terms are not intended as synonyms for each other.Rather, in particular embodiments, “connected” may be used to indicatethat two or more elements are in direct physical or electrical contactwith each other. “Coupled” may mean that two or more elements are indirect physical or electrical contact. However, “coupled” may also meanthat two or more elements are not in direct contact with each other, butyet still cooperate or interact with each other.

It should be understood that embodiments of the present invention may beused in a variety of applications. Although the present invention is notlimited in this respect, the circuits disclosed herein may be used inmany apparatuses such as in the transmitters and receivers of a radiosystem. Radio systems intended to be included within the scope of thepresent invention include, by way of example only, cellularradiotelephone communication systems, satellite communication systems,two-way radio communication systems, one-way pagers, two-way pagers,personal communication systems (PCS), personal digital assistants(PDA's) and the like.

Types of cellular radiotelephone communication systems intended to bewithin the scope of the present invention include, although not limitedto, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) cellular radiotelephonecommunication systems, Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM)cellular radiotelephone systems, North American Digital Cellular (NADC)cellular radiotelephone systems, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)systems, Extended-TDMA (E-TDMA) cellular radiotelephone systems, thirdgeneration (3G) systems like Wide-band CDMA (WCDMA), CDMA-2000, and thelike.

Referring now to FIG. 1, a s system in accordance with one embodiment ofthe present invention will be discussed. In the communication system 100shown in FIG. 1, a communication subsystem 110 and an applicationsubsystem 112 may be included in a wireless terminal 114. Communicationsubsystem 110 may enable a virtual direct interface 102 to network 116,which may include, for example, one or more public mobile networks orone or more land networks, such as the Internet, to be presented toapplication subsystem 112. Alternatively, network 116 may also be aprivate network or an intranet. Application subsystem 112 may includeone or more applications to run on wireless terminal 114. As shown inFIG. 1, communication subsystem 110 may manage access of applicationsubsystem 112 to network 116 via wireless link 120 to wireless serviceprovider 118. Once a session is established between communicationsubsystem 110 and wireless service provider 118, application subsystem112 may gain access to functions provided by network 116 throughwireless service provider 118 over wireless link 120.

In one embodiment of the invention, communication subsystem 110 mayallow application of application subsystem 112 to be independent of anyparticular radio technology or any network implementation of wirelessservice provider 118 by encapsulating wireless communication that haveaccess to public network 116 and providing wireless services toapplication subsystem 112. Such a result may be accomplished wherecommunication subsystem 110 may include wireless communication protocolsoftware and associated protocol services as may be needed to access andsupport a desired network such as a wireless wide area network (WWAN),for example a cellular or mobile telephone network, a personal areanetwork (PAN), for example implementing a network in accordance with aBluetooth standard, for example the Bluetooth 1.0 specificationpromulgated by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, or a wireless localarea network (WLAN), although the scope of the invention is not limitedin this respect.

In one embodiment of the invention, communication subsystem 110 maypresent wireless communication services to application subsystem 112through identified interfaces that abstract the services across one ormore wireless protocols. Communication subsystem 110 may present suchservices independent of any platform or wireless technology used todeliver the services. For example, in accordance with a standard knownas the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), such a communicationplatform may be referred to as the Radio Access Network (RAN) 122 ofwireless service provider 118 for wireless communication, or theintermediate Core Network (CN) 124 used by wireless service provider 118to access public network 116 via communication link 126.

Referring now to FIG. 2, a block diagram of wireless terminal inaccordance with one embodiment of the present invention will bediscussed. As shown in FIG. 2, the functions of wireless terminal 114may be divided between application subsystem 112 and communicationsubsystem 110. Wireless terminal 114 may be, for example, a hand-helddevice such as a cellular telephone or a personal digital assistant(PDA) capable of communicating wirelessly with network 116, although thescope of the invention is not limited in this respect. Applicationsubsystem 112 may be responsible for managing one or more applicationsrunning on wireless terminal 114, for example, providing a managedexecution environment for running applications making use of multimediaservices such as audio, video, and pictures, managing connectionservices including wireless connection services such as Bluetooth (BT)services or wireless local area network (WLAN), and including wiredconnection services such as universal serial bus (USB) services,security services, operating system (OS) services, smart card services,and storage management, although the scope of the invention is notlimited in this respect.

Furthermore, application subsystem 112 may handle input and output fromand to wireless terminal 114 from one or more peripheral devices orsystems, including but not limited to an input device 210 such as akeypad, a display device 212 such as a liquid crystal display (LCD) ortouch screen, battery charger 214, subscriber identity module (M-SIM)216, multimedia card (MMC) 218, and an audio device 220 which mayinclude one or more audio coder/decoders (CODECS), audio accessoriessuch as a car kit, head set, high fidelity (Hi-Fi) sounds and ringer,and/or microphone input and speaker output, although the scope of theinvention is not limited in this respect.

Communication subsystem 110 may be responsible for handling networkcommunication services such as cellular telephone services, wirelesswide area network (WWAN) services, personal area network (PAN) services,Bluetooth services, wireless local area network (WLAN) services, globalpositioning system (GPS) services, position location services, andcommunication subsystem management, although the scope of the inventionis not limited in this respect. Application subsystem 112 andcommunication subsystem 110 may communicate via an applicationcommunication interface 126. In one embodiment of the invention,communication subsystems 110 manages communication with one or morewireless service providers 118 or the like, which may be embodied ascellular network 226 via cellular access interface 232, a Bluetooth (BT)piconetwork 228 via BT access interface 236, a network or constellationof global positioning system (GPS) satellites 230 via GPS interface 234,universal subscriber identity module U(SIM) 238, power managementcontroller (PMC) 224, and a wireless local area network (WLAN) 242 viaWLAN access interface 240, for example, a network compliant with a anInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standard suchas IEEE 802.11a, IEEE 802.11b, and so on, although the scope of theinvention is not limited in this respect. The access interface for thecommunication services may include the physical interface point to corenetwork (CN 124) wireless technology of FIG. 1.

Referring now to FIG. 3, a block diagram of a communication subsystem inaccordance with an embodiment of the invention will be discussed.Communication subsystem 110 may include a transport interface block 310,which may be utilized to allow services to be physically locatedanywhere in wireless terminal 114 while maintaining a unified logicalinterface to application subsystem 112. Transport interface block 310may contain a service access layer to allow services to be discovered bythe components of application subsystem 112 and to support theconnection and transfer of data across the user and provider of aservice. Transport interface block 310 may be realized through differentphysical links across processor boundaries or on a single physicalprocessor using memory and inter-process communication mechanisms. Thearchitecture of communication subsystem 110 may use any combination ofphysical interconnects available through transport interface block 310.

Transport interface block 310 may interface with one or more servers,which may include an audio server 318, cellular server 320, diagnosticserver 322, operations, administration, and maintenance (OA&M) server324, Bluetooth (BT) server 326 coupled with BT protocol stack (PS) 334,WLAN server 328 coupled with WLAN protocol stack (PS) 364, positionlocation (PL) server 330 coupled with position location (PL) 366, andGPS server 332 coupled with GPS engine 368, although the scope of theinvention is not limited in this respect. The servers supporting theseinterfaces may provide a consistent functional interface over thephysical interconnect abstraction to achieve the independence ofcommunication subsystem 110 and application subsystem 112 whilemaintaining the service interface of the communication componentstherein. In addition, transport interface block 310 may manage varyinglevels of service and bandwidth requirements for requested services.

Audio server 318 may communicate with audio manager 336 to relayrequests and send audio information and data to and from applicationsubsystem 112. Audio manager 336 may support interface requests fromapplication subsystem 112 and other blocks of communication subsystem110 such as terminal adaptation function block 340 or cellular protocolstack 348 to combine audio control across one or more components withinwireless terminal 114. Audio services block 338, which may communicatewith cellular protocol stack 344, may process one or more audio controlrequests and may perform audio processing functions which may includecore network (CN) 124 coding and decoding, echo cancellation, and otheraudio control path functions.

Cellular server 320 may communicate with terminal adaptation function(TAF) block 340 which may provide an abstraction of the cellular ATcommand set, service access controller (SAC) support, and circuitswitched data protocols (CSDP) support. TAF block 340 may alsocommunicate with audio manager 336 to establish and control circuitswitched voice paths. TAF block 340 may also communicate with subscriberidentity module (SIM) services block 342 to obtain subscriber identityand subscribed network control information used to maintain access tocore network (CN) 124. TAF block 340 may also translate the functionalinterface of cellular server 320 into interface calls of cellularprotocol stack 348. Such translation may allow the interface of cellularserver 320 to be adapted to cellular protocol stacks of differenttechnologies of different core networks (CN) 124. Cellular protocolstack 348 may provide cellular protocol functionality for a given airlink standard such as the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM)or Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), although the scopeof the invention is not limited in this respect.

Diagnostic server 322 may communicate with diagnostic services 350 whichmay interact with the other blocks of communication subsystem 110 toallow lower-level access to control block subfunctions for the purposeof system diagnosis. Such an arrangement may allow a user of wirelessterminal 114 to enable diagnosis of communication system 100 to acomponent subfunction through application subsystem 112 via transportinterface 310 and diagnostic server 322. Diagnostic services block 350may be responsible to manage, coordinate, gather, and report informationthrough diagnostic server 322 to application subsystem 112 and a user ofwireless terminal 114.

OA&M server 324 may communicate with communication OA&M services block354, which in turn may communicate with subsystem manager 356. Subsystemmanager 356 may provide autonomous control within communicationsubsystem 110 based on one or more configuration profiles. Such anarrangement may allow subsystem manager 356 to bring communicationsubsystem 110 up or disable it under predetermined conditions, which mayallow subsystems manager 356 to interact with components ofcommunication subsystem 110 as may be needed. Subsystem manager 356 mayinteract with communication OA&M services block 354 to establish abehavior policy for communication OA&M services block 354 and to notifycommunication OA&M services block 354 of actions taken. CommunicationOA&M services block 354 may manage overall OA&M transactions takenwithin communication subsystem 110, which may include state management,testing, configuration, downloads of new software, fault management, andevent management, although the scope of the invention is not limited inthis respect. Requests to and responses from application subsystem 112may be provided by the functional interface of OA&M server 324 and thephysical interface abstraction of transport interface block 310.

Bluetooth (BT) server 326 may communicate with BT protocol stack (PS)block 334 to provide application subsystem 112 with access to Bluetoothcore network (CN) 124 technology. Similarly, WLAN server 328 maycommunicate with WLAN protocol stack (PS) 364 to provide applicationsubsystem 112 with access to WLAN core network (CN) 124 technology. GPSserver 332 may communicate with GPS engine 368 to provide globalpositioning system services to application subsystem 112. Positionlocation (PL) server 330 may communicate with position location manager366 to provide enhanced location information to application subsystem112. Such enhanced location information may be provided by combiningposition location information from other components providing suchinformation, including cellular protocol stack 348, BT protocol stack(PS) 334, and GPS server 332 into a single position location update.Position location server 330 may provide functional access to such acombined position location update, although the scope of the inventionis not limited in this respect.

A kernel services block 360 may be provided in communication subsystem110, along with hardware abstraction layer (HAL) block 362 and powermanager 358. Together, kernel services block 360 and HAL block 362 mayprovide control of the hardware and peripherals of communicationsubsystem 110 to effectively manage the state and operational behaviorin a predictable manner. Other blocks of communication subsystem 110 mayinteract with kernel services block 360 and HAL block 362 as neededunder the direction of wireless terminal 114 via application subsystem112 and transport interface block 310, although the scope of theinvention is not limited in this respect.

Wireless communication subsystems 110 as shown in FIG. 3 may provide animplementation independent, wireless technology specific, access servicewithin different private and public networks 116 of communication system100. In a cellular domain, for example, additional complexity to managethe multiplicity of cellular technology solutions available and tomaintain a larger degree of independence across differing cellulartechnologies may be provided. In one embodiment of the invention,Service Access Controller (SAC) functions of TAF block 340 may provide aconsistent programming interface through a cellular server 320 to managethe independence of application subsystem 112 and communicationsubsystem 110. In addition to the wireless components, common servicessuch as audio, diagnostics, and management may be identified with theservices to exercise them, and exported to application subsystem 112.Such an arrangement may provide communication subsystem 110 with apredetermined degree of autonomy. The component isolation and transportinterface block 310 may allow varying implementations to be implementedunderneath and not impact application subsystem 110. Isolating thewireless communication components in communication subsystem 110 fromapplication subsystem 112 may allow a hardware level physical mapping tothe software architecture of communication system 100 and may provide ahigher degree of system integration, although the scope of the inventionis not limited in this respect.

Referring now to FIG. 4, a flow diagram of an aspect of the operation ofa communication subsystem in accordance with an embodiment of thepresent invention will be discussed. Communication subsystem managementblock 410 may control the overall communication system 100.Communication subsystem management block 410 may also be responsible forthe overall control of each of the managed objects 426 insidecommunication subsystem managed objects block 412 for the life of theobjects 426, although the scope of the invention is not limited in thisrespect.

When wireless terminal 114 is turned on, communication subsystem 110 maybe in a disabled system state 414. As power is applied to communicationsubsystem 110, communication subsystem 110 may enter a platform bootstate 416 where devices connected in HAL block 362 may be initialized.Subsequently, kernel services 360 may be started. After devicesconnected to HAL block 362 are initialized and after kernel services 360are started, start system processes may be initiated to transition to asubsystem manager enabled state 418 at which point tasks may be startedto enable system manager 356 at block 420. At this point subsystemmanager 356 may take autonomous action to establish a state ofcommunication subsystem 110 that may include at least OA&M services. Atthis point communication subsystem 110 may enable transport interfaceblock 310 to enable communication with application subsystem 112 andOA&M server 324 as well as to start communication OA&M services 354. Atleast partial or full OA&M service may be enabled within wirelessterminal 114 at this point. Management of communication subsystem 110may then transfer to OA&M system management block 422 where normaloperation may occur. One or more or all OA&M requests received throughOA&M server 324 may be received and acted upon. Typically, such requestsmay be directed toward an appropriate managed object 426 with event andfault policies being enforced at a system level. One or more or allfault reporting and handling events may be profiled and collected fordetailed fault analysis within the fault recovery mechanism at block424. A fatal condition may halt the system and return it to systemdisabled state 414. Faults that are capable of being handled may allowoperation to continue in OA&M system management block 422.

Within communication subsystem managed objects block 412, availableservices may be identified as a managed object 426 that wirelessterminal 114 is capable of controlling. Each service may have ahigher-level set of states that may be common across objects 426. Withinthe active state each service may provide additional sub states allowingfiner control by application subsystem 112 of that component. Once amanaged object is active, that service may have tasks started to enablethe server for that server as well as functional service blocks asneeded. For example, for audio there are audio server, audio manger, andaudio services. Application subsystem 112 may then make use of itsservices by discovering the service over the transport interface 310 andthen using the functional interface it provides into the availableservices.

Although the invention has been described with a certain degree ofparticularity, it should be recognized that elements thereof may bealtered by persons skilled in the art without departing from the spiritand scope of the invention. It is believed that the communicationsubsystem for wireless devices or the like of the present invention andmany of its attendant advantages will be understood by the forgoingdescription, and it will be apparent that various changes may be made inthe form, construction and arrangement of the components thereof withoutdeparting from the scope and spirit of the invention or withoutsacrificing all of its material advantages, the form herein beforedescribed being merely an explanatory embodiment thereof, and furtherwithout providing substantial change thereto. It is the intention of theclaims to encompass and include such changes.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method, comprising: presenting at least one ormore services to an application; recognizing which of the at least oneor more services are related; building a higher-level service bycombining two or more of the at least one or more services recognized asrelated; presenting the higher level service to the applicationreceiving a request to access a network from the application, whereinthe application is independent of any wireless technology; providing aphysical interconnect abstraction between the application and a wirelessnetwork; providing system network services that use a plurality ofwireless technologies, wherein the network services are discoverable bythe application via the physical interconnect abstraction using aninterface that is independent of wireless technologies used to providethe services; connecting to the network using a wireless air linkinterface; and accessing the higher level service using the application.2. A method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the at least one or moreservices are selected from the group consisting essentially of audioservices, cellular services, diagnostic services, operation,administration, and management services, piconet services, wirelesslocal area network services, wireless wide area network services,position location services, and global positioning system services.
 3. Amethod as claimed in claim 1, wherein the higher-level service is anassociation of services and operations associated with at least one ormore communication components.
 4. A method as claimed in claim 1,wherein the at least one or more services include multipleradio-frequency services capable of operating simultaneously.
 5. Amethod as claimed in claim 1, further comprising managing bandwidthrequirements for services accessed by the application via the wirelessair link interface.
 6. A method as claimed in claim 1, furthercomprising managing service levels for services accessed by theapplication via the wireless air link interface.
 7. An articlecomprising a storage medium having stored thereon instructions that,when executed by a computing platform, result in communication via awireless network, by: presenting at least one or more services to anapplication; recognizing which of the at least one or more services arerelated; building a higher-level service by combing two or more of theat least one or more services recognized as related; presenting thehigher level service to the application; receiving a request to access anetwork from the application, wherein the application is independent ofany wireless technology; providing a physical interconnect abstractionbetween the application and the wireless network; providing systemnetwork services that use a plurality of wireless technologies, whereinthe network services are discoverable by the application via thephysical interconnect abstraction using a consistent interface that isindependent of wireless technologies used to provide the services; andconnecting to the network via a wireless air link interface to allow theapplication to access the network.
 8. An article as claimed in claim 7,wherein the instructions, when executed, further result in providing tothe application at least one or more services selected from the groupconsisting essentially of audio services, cellular services, diagnosticservices, operation, administration, and management services, piconetservices, wireless local area network services, wireless wide areanetwork services, position location services, and global positioningsystem services.
 9. An article as claimed in claim 7, wherein theinstructions, when executed, further result in providing to theapplication a higher-level service that includes an association ofservices and operations associated with at least one or morecommunication components.
 10. An article as claimed in claim 7, whereinthe instructions, when executed, further result in presenting to theapplication at least two or more radio-frequency services capable ofoperating simultaneously.
 11. An article as claimed in claim 7, whereinthe instructions, when executed, further result in communication via awireless network by managing bandwidth requirements for servicesaccessed by the application via the wireless air link interface.
 12. Anarticle as claimed in claim 7, wherein the instructions, when executed,further result in communication via a wireless network by managingservice levels for services accessed by the application via the wirelessair link interface.